Test Design

Conference Presentations

Agile methods aren’t just for software anymore—actually, they haven’t been for quite a while. Agile's collaborative, iterative, incremental approaches to work have caused it to go mainstream. But can we apply team-based agile straight out of the box in a nonsoftware context? Although most of the principles and patterns apply, sometimes the practices and frameworks need modification for a particular context. Mike Cottmeyer will explore two case studies of agile journeys: an international hotel chain going through a major rebranding initiative, and a well-known fast food restaurant looking to optimize its kitchen production capacity. These are two totally different companies in two totally different industries, both trying to use agile to solve their problems. We’ll look at the challenges each faced, what they had in common, and the patterns, tools, and techniques they are using.

Today’s IT systems communicate with customers through multiple points of engagement and various interfaces, ranging from web, mobile, and voice to BOTs and apps like Alexa and Siri. Sanil Pillai says these systems need to provide seamless handoffs between different points of interaction—while at the same time providing relevant and contextual information quickly. To accomplish this, a team must be able to successfully pair device hardware capabilities and intelligent software technologies such as location intelligence, biometric sensing, and Bluetooth. Testing these systems and interfaces is becoming an increasingly more complex task, and traditional testing and automation processes simply don’t apply to new-generation digital interaction services. Join Sanil as he discusses the testing and automation challenges in new-generation digital interactions using hyperconnected BOTs.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) mobile apps are going to dominate the technical landscape for the next few years. Compared to current mobile apps, testing this new AR and VR technology will require more preparation, more effort, and new tools. BJ Aberle breaks down the methods and tools he uses to test AR and VR applications. Explore test environment requirements and discover the types of test data you’ll need to prepare for AR and VR testing. Learn about Google’s Tango AR platform and BJ’s experiences testing AR apps, including the Tango-based Cydalion app for the visually impaired. BJ shares the pitfalls he discovered—so you can avoid these when starting your AR or VR testing endeavors. Take back a set of new techniques you may be able to apply to streamline your virtual and augmented reality testing efforts.

Since co-founding Testlio four years ago, Kristel Kruustük and her team of testers worldwide have worked with QA leaders and engineers at some of the world’s most innovative companies, including Lyft, Salesforce, Hotels.com, and Microsoft. During that time testers working with her testing-as-a-service company have identified 100,000 bugs and counting. Along the way, Kristel has learned there are five key traits and skills that make testers and test leaders great. In this eye-opening session, she talks about the tester’s mindset—curious, open, tenacious, and more—and how you can enhance your natural abilities to become a top tester. Then, Kristel shares ways that test leaders achieve higher testing quality without sacrificing speed and how they, appropriately, tradeoff manual and automated testing.

To emulate production-like conditions that cannot be tested on the unit level, many integration and functional tests need a realistic environment. However, performing these tests in a production-like environment is fraught with problems—test data management issues, tests that are difficult to execute repeatedly, and network traffic that causes long-running test execution times. Instead of having to deal with these problems and others, Irene Dhong employs Docker to simulate dependencies. Learn how you can take advantage of Dockerized dependencies for quick test writing, reusability of common development code, and the ability to test early and often on a very low functional level. Irene describes how her development team is using Docker to implement more effective TDD and unit testing environments because Docker utilizes similar infrastructure both on the development and DevOps side. Join in to get Dockerized, too.

We consume and still we desire more—more devices, more apps, more data, more bandwidth, more connectivity. The more we have, the more we want. We assume that to be true—those of us who work in the software industry. But is that true? To understand what is really required of our products, we need to design and test a pyramid of interlocking quality attributes that, together, make for an optimum experience. Isabel Evans discusses why and how we can evaluate UX and what is takes to deliver better UX to our customers. Isabel looks at the needs of the individual software user in conjunction with pressures from the commercial imperatives from the business and external forces from government, the environment, and the needs of society. To test the UX and thus deliver a good experience, we first need to understand the humans who use our products and match their needs and desires to the software’s user experience.

Let’s face it—dogs are born to sniff everything. Using their noses, they gather information from other dogs, people, and most everything. We teach dogs to use their noses to find bombs, predict seizures, locate cancer cells, detect drugs, and so much more. When dogs smell, they are not just recording an odor; they get an entire story. Although testers have fewer scent receptors than dogs, Susan Zampino says that we can learn how to gather information like a dog to drive our exploratory testing. Using active audience participation, Susan will stimulate participants to rely on their sense of “smell” during exploratory testing sessions. Learn and practice multiple new techniques to gather information and uncover hidden risks. With some practice and consistent focus on using your technical, business, and testing experiences, you can become a bloodhound exploratory tester.

The past few years have brought a sea change in the way applications are architected, developed, and consumed—increasing both the complexity of testing and the risk of software failures. Given the trends that impact both architectures (cloud, microservices, and APIs) and processes (DevOps, agile, and continuous delivery), how can software testing keep pace with modern application delivery? Enter continuous testing. Wayne Ariola explores the three main differences between continuous testing and test automation.

MindMapping is a general technique of organizing your thoughts, aligning your ideas, and breaking things down. It’s uses are, in fact, mind blowing. But in this session, join Bob Galen, as he takes you on a visual tour of mindmapping as applied in the software testing space. We’ll be using a free tool and be creating maps to illustrate test case design, test idea generation, sprint-level test planning, and release-level test planning using mindmaps. Along the way, you’ll also gain some new insights into risk-based testing with an agile twist, as we explore the 3-Amigos metaphor. You’ll leave this session with a rudimentary library of maps and another, quite powerful tool, to add to your toolbox. Bring your laptop or other device, as we’ll be using MindMup to create a few simple mindmaps.

Note: To get the most out of this session, please bring a laptop, tablet, or smartphone to this session.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are leading to a new generation of software, which is becoming self-adaptive, autonomous, and smart. Academic researchers and industry practitioners are investigating how these new AI and ML technologies can be leveraged to improve software testing and testing services. A handful of testing-as-a-service (TaaS) vendors already offer services that use AI bots to perform some functional and performance testing. How well do they live up to their claims? Can they be used as an effective substitute or supplement for human testers? Or is AI-driven testing just another passing trend? Join Tariq King as he discusses the current state-of-the-art in AI-based testing services and explores what this new generation of testing services has to offer. Come see demonstrations of AI-driven testing tools and understand their benefits and limitations.

Women Who Test connects women software professionals around the world – allowing them to share testing ideas and solutions while helping each other thrive and advance their careers.

The community is an ever-expanding group of engaged, and encouraging women who are stepping up to start meet-ups and create local chapters. Explore the existing local chapters and consider sharing and joining! WomenWhoTest.com